Blizzard Explains Horadric Cache Legendary Drop Rules

Does the loot from a Horadric Cache vary (in quality or frequency) depending on the difficulty level where you obtain it, or open it? No. Blizzard explains Horadric Cache legendary drop rules:

I run bounties on Normal just to burn through them as quick as possible, but I can burn through T1 almost just as fast. Should I be doing them on T1 for a higher percentage drop rate from the caches or should I just keep doing them on normal?Grimiku: The loot from a Horadric Cache won’t change based on the difficulty, but Torment 1 does offer incentives (like an increased drop rate, gold and experience) that help while you’re earning a cache. If what you want is to get as many Horadric Caches as possible then a lower difficulty might be optimal, though, since all of the benefits for increasing the difficulty to Torment 1 exist outside of the cache specific loot.

Sorry, just wanted to clarify something. You’re very clear about the loot in the cache not changing based on the difficulty. I take that to mean that the loot table does not change.

However, does the “chance” that you’ll get a legendary from that fixed loot table increase with each torment level? For example. Am I just as likely to get a Ring of Royal Grandeur (a cache specific item) from a T1 cache as I am from a T6 cache?
Grimiku: That’s a great observation, but more of an oversight on my part rather than precise, selective messaging. The chance to get a Legendary item from a Horadric Cache does not change based on the difficulty you acquired the cache. To use the example provided you’d have the same chance to get the Ring of Royal Grandeur from a cache acquired in Torment 1 as one acquired in Torment 6.

Two other common Bounty Bag questions.

Q: Does the gear roll when the bag is found, or opened?
A: The level of the gear and the act the bag was earned in is set when Tyrael hands it over, but the actual items roll their stats when the bag is opened. This is why it used to be possible to get Imperial gems from Normal difficulty bags if you opened them in T6. The items in the bag will be at the level of the char who found them. For instance, opening bags found by a lvl 70 DH with your level 60 WD will get you WD-themed items (INT on the mainstat, lots of WD helms and knives, etc) but all the items will be level 70, and all the gems will be Marquise. This means you can cross-class farm a bit with bounty bags; the opening class will get more appropriate items for their class and the mainstat will usually roll correctly.

Q: Which legendary items can only be found from Horadric Caches?
A: There are 20 legendary items that can only be found from Horadric Caches, and they are arranged by acts. We’ve got a full listing in the Diablowiki.net article, with their special legendary properties, for easy reference. Here’s a quick list:

Act One

Golden Gorget of Leoric, Amulet. After earning a massacre bonus, 4–6 Skeletons are summoned to fight by your side for 10 seconds

Soulsmasher, Two-Handed Mace. When you kill an enemy, it explodes for 450–600% of your Life per Kill as damage to all enemies within 20 yards. You no longer benefit from your Life per Kill.

I don’t have that list memorized (yet), and every time I look at it I get a moment of, “oh yeah, I scored that one helm/boots/cloak and didn’t realize it was cache-only.” I’ve found cache-only items from every act, despite never split-farming them intensively (not since the beta, at least) but never the Act 1 Ring or the Act 2 Gloves that are the most useful/sought after.

Update: Nevalistis posted some more info about Cache contents and when/how they are determined.

To my knowledge, cache contents are determined when your character receives them, not when they are opened.
Nevalistis: This should be the case. However, bear in mind that smart loot drops are not always guaranteed, even from Horadric Caches – there’s still a chance the items within do not roll appropriately for your character, though the chance for that is fairly low.

I did bounties with my low level barb and opened them with my 70 wizard. The gear that dropped had int, but was the level of my barb.
Nevalistis: As I mentioned, such coincidences can occur, but should generally be rare. I did experience something similar earlier today, just to check and make sure for myself. A cache obtained by my 70 Wizard gave my 60 Barbarian a set of level 70 shoulders with Strength, but the next cache I gave to my 60 Demon Hunter gave her a level 70 wand with Intelligence.

It would take hundreds of tests to be absolutely certain on an individual level. Luckily, that’s something our Quality Assurance team has already been thoroughly over. 😉 Items found within should be dependent on the Horadric Cache’s acquirer if they roll smart loot, and the Difficulty in which they are acquired or opened should have no bearing on the loot produced.

I can’t say for certain, but all the evidence I’ve seen agrees with the second poster, and disagrees with Nevalistis. As I said higher up in this post, I recently opened 8 bags, all found by lvl 70 barb and DH, with my lvl 60 WD. And every item was level 70, and almost every item had INT as the stat. Plus there were 3 WD helms and a ceremonial dagger, but zero hand xbows, mighty weapons or belts, etc.

I’d love to know for sure, so if you guys have done some testing share the results in comments, but as far as I can tell/test, 1) cache items set their Act of origin and level when they are spawned, but 2) the actual items and their stats are rolled when you open the cache, and smart drop for the class that opens them.

I do hope that some effort is put into making each act equally as compelling. RoRG is overwhelmingly good (even with not-so-great rolls) and now that GoW have been fixed to last 10 min instead of 60…no other act really seems worth farming.

I do hope that some effort is put into making each act equally as compelling. RoRG is overwhelmingly good (even with not-so-great rolls) and now that GoW have been fixed to last 10 min instead of 60...no other act really seems worth farming.

While I do agree Act 1 has pretty much the best drops from the Cache, the rest offer some compelling items too. While Gloves of Worship was fixed, it’s still quite good even in it’s current state, and the Boot of Illusion can be a life saver as well in some situations.

Pride’s Fall from Act 3 is also very popular, and the Amulet seems quite fun, but is definitely very lackluster when it comes to the Act 1 and 2 drops, maybe the ring is situationally useful, if only for the convenience of just autopicking all the gold on the screen.

Act 5 is the weird one, with two of the Legendaries being borderline useless, considering they remove either your Life on Kill, or your passive Life regeneration. To balance that out, the ring is actually quite good, especially when used on a character that has fears of its own, and the Crusader Shield combined with maxed block offers quite a bit of survivability. The Hand Crossbow seems like a cool thing too to tide one over till say, a Kridershot drops.

But yes, I have to confess, I mainly farm Act 1 and 2 on my Wizard, with Act 4 tossed in because it’s fast with the small maps.

I was lucky enough to get a Helltrapper the other day. I wasn’t specifically looking for it, but I’m glad I found it. I’m still tweaking my build around it, but I’m having a lot of fun with it. And I would absolutely love to find the Marauder set to go with it!

What I love the most about Helltrapper though, I kind of found out by accident. I happened to be using Spitfire Turret when I tried it out & it actually casts the same rune you are using of the skills it can trigger. That makes it way more useful than it might appear from it’s description (I’m a fire based DH, so my “free” sentries benefit from that as well). I assumed it would just cast the base skills (no rune). Also notable is that the number of sentries/traps is not limited to the number you can normally have active (again, how I assumed it would work), and are not counted towards what you can cast from the actual skills.

On a mostly unrelated note, the bow Cluckeye has a misleading description as well. Who cares if it clucks when I shoot, what good is that? But when it does, it shoots a chicken that does damage as well (which IS useful).

The bonus they provide would be acceptable if it had no drawback. As is, you could be a DH with cit/life%/sockets for ammys/life regen in every available slot, Brooding, Aid Station, Boar, Templar, all level up points in vit/life%/life regen, and then your aura would STILL barely dent things, and neither would your character because you spent 90% of your affix slots on being a gimmick doorstop. And that is the absolute maximum obtainable regen in the entire game.

The best way to farm act one caches if you’re too lazy is to join a public normal game on adventure mode of course. The games are mostly filled with bots and never seem to act to your presence. You can tab out/afk and come back with the room empty and a cache in your inventory.

I opened 6 caches at once on my crusader that I had farmed on my wizard. All the yellows were str but the legendary had int. It could be that the cache rolls it’s legendary when it’s received but rolls the yellows at the time they are dropped.